Exploring and Building Open [Source] Software for Learning Ecosystems

Experience Design / Education / Multi-device / Grav CMS

I’ve been once again feverishly working in the open on the Fall 2017 Course Hub (built with my Grav Open Course Hub and using a flipped-LMS approach, naturally!) for SFUCMPT 363 so that potential students can better self-assess course fit before our first class meets in-person on Sept 6th.

The year brings some changes, with the addition of an individual component (reflective learning log) to the two group assignments and an expansion of the individual usability assessment assignment. Students will research and design potential user experience improvements for an open source project of their choice.

Here is the list of apps I am using to reach my pedagogical and student/facilitator experience goals this term (with lots of open source goodness):

I’ve been feverishly working in the open on the Fall 2016 Course Hub (built with my Grav Course Hub and using a flipped-LMS approach, naturally!) for SFUCMPT 363 so that potential students can better self-assess course fit before online registration starts on July 4th.

A significant change to the course this year is that students will research and design potential user experience improvements for an open source project of their choice. Also, the entire course outline is a structured as a series of questions, which will be examined, discussed and experienced as the course proceeds.

I’ve been further refining my sustainable approach of an open design practice for my experience design work in the education field, and (bravely or foolishly) I’ve attempted to craft a working definition of the phrase:

(1/3) What is a”sustainable open design practice”? My first attempt of a definition is “where the creation of an open product and it's

For example, the modern flat-file CMS Grav along with GitHub and an automatic deployment service such as Deploy can be used quite effectively by tech-savvy educators as an open and collaborative platform to support a flipped-LMS approach:

Want to get started with flipping your own LMS? Since this article was written I’ve built an open source project using the Grav CMS to help other tech-savvy instructors - explore the on-line demo and then head over to Grav Course Hub Getting Started Guide to get going.

As a modern flat-file CMS, Grav can take full advantage of today’s ecosystem of open and collaborative editing services, such as GitHub or GitLab. In this article we will look at how to easily use Grav with GitHub Desktop (which uses GitHub and Git for source control) and the automatic deployment service Deploy to result in a very efficient, open and collaborative workflow. No scripting or command line interactions will be required, I promise.

As an educator, the use of a service such as GitHub to store an online course companion is very appealing as not only does it support an open practice but also enables students to control the very learning environment that they are using. I first described this workflow in my earlier article My Dream Workflow as an Instructor.

Before you start this tutorial I suggest you first get your Grav site up and running locally using MAMP, as outlined in Running Grav Locally with MAMP. By utilizing MAMP you will then have a complete, local version of your course companion site running on your computer that can be easily updated and then deployed to your Webserver.

This tutorial should take about 15 minutes, and once completed you will have an efficient, open, and collaborative workflow for yourself and your students!

Download the GitHub Desktop client for your computer (Mac or PC), and once it is installed launch the application and proceed with the setup process to enter your GitHub account credentials.

Figure 1. GitHub Desktop setup welcome.

Figure 2. GitHub Desktop connect to GitHub.

Assuming you already have a Grav site present on your computer (and preferably one that is already viewable via MAMP), you next need to create a GitHub Repository of your site. It is recommended that if this is the first time you are using GitHub with Grav that you add the entire Grav site to GitHub, but other approaches are possible such as only storing the “user” folder (see the provided additional resources at the end of this article for more options).

Figure 3. GitHub Desktop main window, displaying the included tutorial.

Press the “Add a Repository” button (upper-right plus(+) sign in the main window) in the GitHub Desktop client, select the “Add” tab within the displayed dialog box, and then press the “Choose…” button to select the folder containing your entire Grav site.

Figure 4. GitHub Desktop add Repository dialog.

Figure 5. GitHub Desktop local Repository added.

You are now ready for the first commit to your new GitHub repository. Whenever you make a commit you will need to include a brief text summary - as this is your first commit enter the text “First commit.” into the “Summary” text box (above the “Description” text field), and then press the button “Commit to master”.

Figure 6. GitHub Desktop first commit.

Since this is your first commit to your repository, the “Publish” button (upper-left of main window) will need to be also pressed to actually perform the actual file updates. Once the “Publish” button is pressed enter a short description for your new GitHub repository and then select which GitHub account you want to publish to (if you have multiple accounts).

Figure 7. GitHub Desktop - repository details dialog box.

Figure 8. GitHub Desktop publishing the repository.

Figure 9. GitHub Desktop repository published.

Once this process is complete you should now be able to view your Grav site files stored on GitHub - please do this now to ensure that everything went as expected. If you have any issues during this process you may find more detailed GitHub Desktop client support information at https://help.github.com/desktop/.

Congratulations! With the above steps completed you now have a Grav site which you can run and test locally (using MAMP), and with only one click in the GitHub Desktop application have any changed local site files updated in your GitHub repository and then have them automatically pushed to your Webserver hosting your Grav site (via either Deploy or Buddy). In my experience, I can make an update to my Grav site and sync changes to GitHub for automatic deployment to my Webserver in as little as 30 seconds.

Figure 19. GitHub Desktop main window. When any changes are detected they will be displayed on this screen and can be pushed to GitHub when the “Commit and Sync master” button is pressed.

Students can also now make suggested changes to your Grav site via GitHub or GitHub repository file links provided in your Grav site (see the bottom of this example page at http://paulhibbitts.net/cmpt-363-153//resources). GitHub will provide an excellent view of proposed changes, which you can immediately accept or start a further discussion about these possible changes with the student submitting them.

You can press the GitHub Desktop client “Sync” button (which replaces the “Publish” button you previously used) in the GitHub Desktop client to also download any changes made to the online GitHub repository down to your own computer.

Interested in learning even more about using Grav with GitHub? Check out these two super-informative posts on the Grav Blog:

Recently, I’ve been exploring ways to use the modern flat-file CMS Grav as a simple open publishing tool. Grav is a natural candidate for this usage, as all content is stored as individual files which can be stored on a variety of open and collaborative editing environments (e.g. GitHub).

This article will be substantially updated once the pre-release Git Sync plugin for Grav is officially released (expected in February).

Here is a snapshot of the approach that has produced the best results for me so far:

An instance of Grav running on a Web server, using a slightly modified version of the Learn2 theme. The Learn2 theme is pre-configured with support for content to be stored/maintained on GitHub, although any Grav theme could also be customized to support this ability. The Admin Panel plugin has also been installed, providing the ability to perform easily any needed Grav system updates.

Figure 1. Grav Learn2 Theme.

Figure 2. Grav Admin Panel Dashboard.

A GitHub repository containing only the “Pages” folder of the Grav instance. This results in having only content files (using Markdown) being presented in the repository, bringing a high-level of visibility to the content files of your site for users who wish to interact directly with the GitHub repository. You can view the GitHub repository of my example “Pages” site folder at https://github.com/hibbitts-design/grav-course-hub-starter-kit

Using a GetHub Webhook either through a service such as Deploy, or directly by adding the needed PHP file (see Grav Development with GitHub - Part 2 on getgrav.org), configure a site update to be automatically performed when one or more content files are modified on GitHub.

We now have a simple open publishing system which leverages the power of GitHub! Anytime someone makes a change in the GitHub repository, and you approve of the change, the results will be automatically published to your live site. As well, all of your edits, etc. are available for public viewing and commentary. The content made available on GitHub may also be forked and used for other useful purposes.

It should be noted that you would want to make any significant changes to the chosen Grav theme before you upload the Grav site to your Web server. You can still make changes to the theme once it is running on your Web server, but doing so would require using a FTP program to edit the needed files or copy the updated files from your computer to the site. Alternatively, you could the place the “User” folder on GitHub (or even the entire Grav instance, as Grav is open source) which would also contain any theme customizations, but doing so would reduce the high-level visibility of your content files achieved when only placing the contents of your “Pages” folder on GitHub.

Here is an overview of the flow of someone making a change to your site content via GitHub:

Viewing the Grav site, a viewer can click the provided “Edit this Page” link to propose changes to the page. You can view a live example of this technique at my Course Hub Starter Kit prototype site.

Figure 4. Example site page - Overview, using a modified version of the Learn2 theme with a link to edit the page on GitHub.

Once the viewer has logged into GitHub, they can edit the page and then submit a Pull Request (a request for the site administrator to review and approve the submitted changes).
Figure 5. Editing Overview site page on GitHub, which when completed will result in a Pull Request.

The site administrator reviews the submitted Pull Request, and can approve changes immediately or start a discussion with the author of the proposed changes for further modifications, etc.
Figure 6. Review submitted Pull Request on GitHub, showing GitHub’s super-useful file changes preview.

Once the change is approved by a site administrator of the GitHub account the changes to the GitHub repository will be automatically pushed to the server, where the updated content is available to be viewed.
Figure 7. Updated site page - Overview.

I personally also like to use GitHub Desktop as a point-and-click means to keep a local copy of my GitHub repositories on my local machine so I can use any markdown-enabled application for editing my content files. GitHub Desktop can also sync any changes made to the GitHub repository down to your local machine. You can learn more about my use of GitHub Desktop in my earlier post My Dream Workflow as an Instructor.

Note: The original title of this post was ‘Using Grav as a Simple Open Publishing Tool’.